


Office Scuttlebutt is Always Wrong (Except When It Isn't)

by Ralkana



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Character Study, Developing Relationship, Fix-It, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-03
Updated: 2012-09-03
Packaged: 2017-11-13 12:16:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/503453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ralkana/pseuds/Ralkana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five rumors about Phil Coulson (and one truth).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Office Scuttlebutt is Always Wrong (Except When It Isn't)

**Author's Note:**

> **SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE.** Vague, but they're there.
> 
> My first 5+1, and my first fic for this pairing, which hit me like a freaking train.
> 
> There's a little bit of swearing, because, well, it's Clint's head.

 

**1.**

Clint's strolling easily through the halls of SHIELD, trying his damnedest to hide the way his hands are shaking, on his way to the range. It's not like he's going to run across anyone else in the halls after two in the morning, but if he does, there's nothing wrong -- he's just on his way for a little late night practice, not running from the damn dreams that follow him everywhere.

There's a light on under Coulson's office door, and Clint stops.

Maybe the rumors are right. Maybe the senior agent doesn't sleep.

He debates with himself for about half a second, shrugs, and knocks quietly on the door.

There's no answer.

He waits a moment, knocks again, and then does what he knows nobody else in SHIELD -- except maybe Fury or Hill -- would do. He tries the knob.

It's unlocked and the door opens easily. He pokes his head in. "Sir?"

Coulson sits up instantly from where he's slumped over the desk, eyes alert. "Barton?"

Clint stares back, biting the inside of his cheek to stop the laugh that's threatening to bubble up. Coulson may be perfectly awake and alert now, but five seconds ago, he was _out_ on his desk. His shirt is wrinkled, his tie a little loose, and there's a crease on his cheek from the stack of forms he was resting on.

It's _adorable_ , and Clint knows that if any hint of that thought crosses his face, he's going to end up in Medical.

"Just, uh..." _Just checking up on you._ Yep, that's a thought that also leads to Medical. "Just checking to make sure I signed all my after-actions in all the right spots."

"What time is it?" Coulson rubs a hand quickly over his face, and the fact that he allows Clint to see the moment of weakness -- the question and the gesture -- Clint's never been so glad for the damn dreams.

"After oh two hundred, sir."

Coulson closes the open folder on his desk and caps his pen, standing up to shrug into his coat.

"Shall I leave, sir?" Clint asks innocently, and then nods toward the outlet in the corner. "So that you can plug yourself in and regenerate?"

Coulson closes his eyes, very briefly, and Clint laughs.

"At least they've stopped believing I hang from the rafters by my ankles."

"Your office has no rafters, sir."

"Go to bed, Barton."

"Yes, sir."

And if he and Coulson walk back toward base quarters together, well, he was heading that way anyway.

 

**2.**

"That's Agent Coulson's office."

There's an awed silence.

Then, from slightly further down the hall as the baby agents move on, a hushed whisper. "I heard he once took out three men with a _paper clip_."

From Coulson's desk comes a tiny, nearly-inaudible sigh. Clint glances over from where he's lounging on the couch, signing the endless forms the Initiative generates, to see Coulson frowning at his monitor.

"Why is it always a paper clip?" he muses. "Why is it never a post-it note? Or a glue stick?"

"Maybe it's time to brush up on your hand-to-office-supply combat skills in the gym, sir. I could round up some witnesses." He grins and pulls out his phone. "Or maybe it's time to anonymously spread the YouTube link to a certain gas station surveillance video once again."

Coulson just glares at him, but Clint's known him too long. There's pride in the way his lips quirk up at the corners, just a millimeter, there and gone.

 

**3.**

"Where's he from?" Clint hears and he looks up to see Coulson, striding confidently away from the building toward the motor pool.

Voices drift up from beneath where he sits on the roof, baby agents beneath him on the building's patio, like birds in a nest.

There's a snort. "Who knows? Some lab somewhere."

"Yeah," another laughs, mouth full of something. "Spawned, or created in some beaker or on some workbench. It's not like he came from a normal family."

Clint thinks of the few birthday cards Coulson receives every year, the ones that come with no return addresses, which he reads very thoroughly, a smile on his face that no one but Clint could see, before he carefully shreds them himself.

He thinks of quiet, short, infrequent evening phone calls, and joyous shouts of "Uncle Phil!" audible even from several feet away.

He thinks of the pack of Captain America trading cards that Coulson keeps in his gear bag. Not the good ones, the expensive ones -- those are locked in his fireproof strongbox with the rest of his important papers -- but the cheap ones, reissues of reprints of reissues. Coulson sits sometimes, shuffling through them, a distant look on his impassive face, and Clint knows he's thinking of small hands picking them and carefully wrapping them, and that instead of a poorly-drawn superhero, he's seeing the faces in the pictures he can't carry with him.

The baby agents are laughing now, half in resentment, half in awe, and Clint shakes his head and rolls gracefully to his feet, gathering his gear as he heads for the practice range.

 

**4.**

Clint comes to wakefulness slowly, freezing when he realizes the angle of the light is wrong. Memories of the previous night drift slowly back, and he grins and lazily stretches, tight muscles protesting in the best of ways.

_Holy hell,_ he thinks, a little dazed. _I'm waking up in Phil Coulson's bed._

Then, he frowns. _I'm waking up **alone** in Phil Coulson's bed._

But there's the scent of freshly-brewed coffee and the murmur of a television, and his whole body relaxes. He gives himself a moment to close his eyes and just breathe before searching for his boxers.

He follows the sound of the TV to the living room, stuttering to a halt in the doorway.

Phil's on the couch, legs stretched out before him, cup of coffee in one hand, and Clint thinks he's never been so glad the baby agents are wrong. As good as Phil looks in his ever-present suit, he does, in fact, own something else to wear.

He's wearing dark jeans that are obviously well-loved and a soft shirt in some color Clint wouldn't even try to name. All he knows is, it brings out the silver in Phil's eyes, and when Phil looks up at him and smiles, his heart does a slow roll in his chest. 

_Shit, Barton,_ he thinks absently, even as he smiles back. _You're a goner._

 

**5.**

It isn't until Fury opens the door and Clint sees who's inside that he allows himself to believe this is true, this is real as he stumbles across the room, coming to his knees by the bedside. The others have crowded into the room, and there are loud voices and fists on walls and cursing, and Clint doesn't care.

Phil is pale and unconscious, tubes and machines everywhere, but his chest is rising and falling, and Clint takes Phil's limp hand in his own, pressing his lips to it, resting his forehead against it, and the others have stopped arguing and they are murmuring now, and he doesn't care.

"They said you were dead," he whispers harshly. "I didn't believe them."

But it's a lie, and he knows it, and he knows _Phil_ would know it. He believed every word. Phil was _dead_ , gone, never coming back, but now he's here. And Clint has _never_ been so relieved to find out that people are always wrong about Phil Coulson.

 

**+1.**

They're sitting in the commissary, having lunch together, which means that they're both ignoring their food and, basically, each other. Clint's playing Angry Birds -- physics games are the best invention _ever_ for the smartphone -- and Phil's tackling the batch of after-actions from the Avengers' latest misadventure.

"I heard he's secretly married," the newest recruit whispers, and Clint locks eyes with Phil for the briefest of moments as the rest of the baby agents hunch their shoulders and hurriedly shush her.

"Don't be stupid," one of them hisses. "The only thing he's married to is the job."

Their eyes lock again, and Phil lifts his cup of coffee to hide the way his lips are trying to curve up into a smile.

"Even scuttlebutt gets in a lucky shot now and then," Phil murmurs, and if everyone around them thinks Clint's grinning because he beat another level on his game, well, that's perfectly fine with him.


End file.
